Recruitment

Mid-Term GJ Recruitment for 6-month Term

Sonoma County has tried something unique for Juror recruitment.  For the second year in a row, we found ourselves in an unenviable position, having a jury of less than nineteen, with no alternates.  We hope to cure this condition before it settles in.

Sonoma County’s local Grand Jury Association, the sitting Grand Jury, and the Sonoma County Superior Court launched an October/November, 5-week, blitz campaign for recruiting new juror pool candidates.  The candidates would only be committed to the 2019 half of the jury term.

Because of the short notice and duration of this campaign, we avoided events like speeches or mixers.  The only documents we used, specific to the Mid-Term aspect of this campaign, were flyer and PSA.  Our focus targets were each addressable by either telephone or internet:

1)     Prior Jurors – We have routinely asked them for the past two years, without remarkable success; but still, we did it again.  We maintain a list of past jurors from the last five years.  We sent them all a flyer.  BTW: our total pool this year was under twenty.

2)     The Press - Deadlines were a problem.  If we’d had two months lead-time, this approach would have been far more effective.  Nonetheless, we hit more than half of our dozen plus small town rags.  We wrote a letter to the Editor of each, linking in the October 2017 fires, and attaching PSA and flyer.  This was immensely successful, at least for stirring concern and discussion.  All the print media bought into the message and printed something, one monthly (35,000 print-run) published the flyer for free.  This seems to have generated over a dozen application responses.

3)     Senior Centers – We have fifteen senior-centric organizations in Sonoma County.  Our timing missed all but one of their monthly newsletters.  The good news was that, most of them put our flyer up on their online site, printed it out for display around their venue, and were anxiously ready to support us in December-January, when we come back again for 2019-2020 full year recruitment.  We sent a “suggested item” for including in their newsletter, the press Letter to the Editor. 

We are sending out the flyer again, with the suggested reminder that the Courts may consider applications for the Mid-Tern 2018-19 Jury, as well for the 2019-20 Jury Pool.

It is our hope that an early December announcement to ten thousand seniors will bring in another half dozen qualified applicants.

4)     Libraries – Sonoma County has a dozen regional libraries.  We placed in each of them, a 3-tier information display holder, which contained flyers, the PSAs, and applications.  This may or may not be a successful outreach contact, but it is at least a brick-and-mortar venue to pick up the information and application.

Questions

How do we measure success?  by the number of applications?
How will this group be trained?  CGJA has offered.
Will this group be offered first year membership in CGJA?  CGJA has offered.
How will the sitting Jury adapt to a mid-year freshman squad?